Chapter 1 The Gods Vanish on a Cloudy Day

The Huoxi people weren't exactly forgotten by Su Zhou, it's just that there were truly many things happening.

Ever since he destroyed the Star噬者 (Shixingzhe, Star Eater), he had been rushing towards the borders of the galaxy and fighting the Void Cult. In addition, Ross 128 was indeed on the verge of exploding. Huoxi Yue was also pushed into the sun by him, and the Huoxi Star's ecology was almost completely collapsed. Su Zhou could only take them into his personal space, place their souls in the electronic underworld, and entrust their bodies to the care of the Wisdom Tree.

In fact, this wasn't bad. The electronic underworld could provide the Huoxi people with a life almost identical to reality, maintaining their social stability. And the Huoxi people's bodies, under the care of the Wisdom Tree, didn't require much nourishment. The many warships and meteorites that Su Zhou's body devoured during battle were enough to cultivate enough spiritual plants in his personal space to provide nutrients.

Even, because 6.5 billion souls were in his personal space, acting as the world's energy gatherer, the energy level of his personal space rose by more than one order of magnitude. If you had to say, it was already the highest-level blessed land on Earth.

Anything higher would be an abnormal world situation like the Aeon World, which wouldn't be good.

Su Zhou's personal space was now divided into five major parts.

The island where the Wisdom Tree was located was the central continent of the personal space, the most vast and expansive, with numerous spiritual plants, and the Bee-People 厄木 (Emu) and 祈灵 (Qiling) thriving in it. It could be considered the area where Su Zhou's dependents lived.

The World Tree Spear was also rooted here, and it was now lush and verdant. It was an area with very beautiful scenery, almost a sacred immortal realm, with almost liquefied cloud spiritual energy permeating it.

The southern island was essentially the Knife-Sheath Mountain of the Extinction Blade.

Since the Extinction Blade achieved the Dao weapon status, it had been nurtured in Su Zhou's personal space. Its power elevated the continent and coexisted with the entire personal space, thus forming an independent continent as a cycle, constantly strengthening itself. It could even be said that it had become a part of Su Zhou's body.

The southern island had a lot of flames and metal energy. From time to time, one could see platinum baleful aura and blazing scorching flames intertwined to form fire clouds, shrouding a sky.

The east was the earth vein node. There was a high mountain there, but the middle of the mountain was vacuum, with a bottomless abyss leading to the depths of the personal space's underground. A huge amount of spiritual energy surged in this conduit connecting the earth and the sky, representing the cycle of heaven and earth.

That was the mountain range created by the earth vein pillar from the Perfect World, and it was also the foundation of the elements. It was the highest point in the personal space, and it was perpetually surrounded by clouds of spiritual energy.

As for the west, it was the land where the wind rises, the land of thunder, and there were always endless thunder and dark clouds churning.

The spiritual energy of the entire personal space gathered on this plain-like continent, collided, and finally turned into monsoons that surrounded the entire world. After circling the world once, it would eventually gather here again. All kinds of accumulated miasma and foul air would be washed away in a clear sweep by the roaring thunder and rain, purified into clear spiritual energy.

The interaction of wind and thunder would also create pure life spiritual energy. This was also the breeding ground for various elemental lives. Various wind spirits and thunder spirits drifted across this land, ignorant and innocent.

The last one, the north...

In essence, it was a spare area similar to a warehouse, now used as a placement for various special spiritual energy structures in Su Zhou's personal space.

The bodies of the Huoxi people were now located in this area.

At this time, Su Zhou cast his vision into his personal space, looking at the northern continent where the Huoxi people now resided.

Then, he was stunned for a moment.

"What the hell is this?"

He exclaimed in a low voice. In the youth's eyes... what appeared was a scene almost like an abyss.

The style of the northern continent was different from the many islands and continents that were almost at the beginning of creation, where all places were extreme elemental miracles.

The northern continent was now covered by countless vines and tree roots flashing with cyan-purple spiritual light crystals. Whether it was plains or mountain ranges and hills, they were all covered by the roots of these divine trees. Although there were no dark clouds shrouded over the entire continent, the hazy spiritual light seemed to repel the brilliance of the fire element sun, causing the entire continent to be surrounded by semi-transparent spiritual mist that faintly echoed with murmurs.

In every corner of the continent, there were semi-transparent coffins neatly arranged. Each coffin was a basic life support system, storing a Huoxi person's body inside.

At the same time, each coffin was wrapped in dense tree roots. The life support system from the divine tree was to infiltrate its roots into the Huoxi person's body to carry out biological maintenance.

But looking at it this way, it was like something out of a biological horror film. Thin, dense roots like erosion, seeping into a person's body from their ears, eyes, mouth, and nose, entangling them all over.

Countless coffins, numbering in the billions, were spread across every corner of the continent. In the center of many coffins, there were central mother trees used to manage a region. Most of these mother trees were 500 meters tall, looking like a giant umbrella. On the dark green leaves, there was a flashing light of light blue. The steaming spiritual energy churned between the branches and leaves, and the roots of the central mother tree spread out many crystallized pipelines on the ground, spreading to every coffin gathering point.

At first glance, it looked like an evil blood-god tree, rooted above the myriad living beings, sucking their flesh and blood to live!

It was completely like those corpse fortresses in the abyss, forged with flesh and blood as materials.

——In fact, it was the opposite.

It was the divine tree absorbing the world's nutrients, safely maintaining the bodies of these Huoxi people in the smallest way.

"...Next time, I should teach the Wisdom Tree a little human aesthetics."

Su Zhou stared at the northern continent, which was no different from the demon realm, his brows furrowed. He muttered in a low voice, "At least cosplay as the Netherworld, or the Underworld!"

"What about the Naihe Bridge and Ox-Head and Horse-Face? Hell Hounds, the River Styx, and the Ferryman? And the Angels of Doom, Asuras, and Mandala flowers, give me all of them!"

"This Wisdom Tree is just unprofessional!"

"Although it's weird for me to say this..." Yala couldn't help but retort after hearing Su Zhou's muttering, "But can't you think of some aboveground aesthetics? Seven Heavens, Nine Worlds, Three Realms Nine Heavens, Valhalla, Immortal Realm Sacred Mountain, which one isn't better than your underworld stuff?"

"Hey, the Netherworld, that's close enough!"

And just as Su Zhou and Yala were discussing what the northern continent should look like, the youth's gaze shifted.

He could see that all the souls of the Huoxi people were located in the 'Netherworld Server' in the center of the northern continent.

The square server, 50 meters tall, looked like a square high-rise building covered with complex runes. Its outer shell was forged from the most stable fine gold. If you could get past the outer shell and see inside, you would find that the server didn't even have a physical body. Its main body was a materialized spiritual power array, with a large number of cloud-like bodies composed of numerous runes drifting in the array skeleton, passing through information storage crystals that served as the core of the server.

6.5 billion Huoxi people lived in it, living in a virtual world.

Su Zhou sensed it slightly and realized that the Huoxi people were still maintaining their past common life in the Netherworld Server.

Because they knew that their souls and bodies were separated and that they would definitely return to reality in the future, a group of people, represented by 'Xiang De', the leader of the Huoxi Star, insisted on doing virtual work in the virtual space, planting virtual crops, making virtual food, and carrying out virtual eating and sleeping to ensure the coordination and stability of the body and soul.

This request was indeed reasonable. Although some people thought that they were in a soul state and could completely satisfy their own needs and indulge in fantasy and enjoyment, this kind of free hedonism quickly dissipated because it lost the soil for growth under the circumstances that the Wisdom Tree did not grant creation permissions.

For these reasons, when Su Zhou descended in front of Xiang De, who was still working hard as in the past, this middle-aged dragon man who was stunned for a while couldn't help but burst into tears.

"Marshal Su...you're finally back!"

Although all the Huoxi people had lent a trace of power to Su Zhou's body under a vague call earlier, as a blessing for the Extinction Star斩星刃 (Zhanxingren, Star-Slaying Blade), severely injuring the Finality 十面 (Shimiàn, Ten Faces), they also knew that this was not a sign of Su Zhou's return, but merely the urging of his body.

But now, Xiang De, who saw Su Zhou's soul, knew that this was not an illusion, nor a divided soul. This thick and powerful, solemn and sacred aura was undoubtedly Su Zhou himself!

"Don't worry."

Without wasting time exchanging pleasantries with Xiang De, Su Zhou helped Xiang De up, who was holding his hands tightly. He said calmly, "My return this time is to give you Huoxi people an explanation."

"Your future will of course live in the real world, and not in a virtual space like the Netherworld that only provides for wandering souls...Xiang De, don't worry, I still remember you."

"I just returned to Earth, and I'm afraid it will take a while to find a suitable world for you. But from now on, you have to give the people a vaccination and prepare in advance."

"No problem!"

Xiang De naturally agreed with Su Zhou's words one hundred percent.

In the past two years, in order to ensure that all the residents of Huoxi Star could live normally in their personal space and maintain their habits in reality, it had been too exhausting for this civilization leader.

God knows how tired and hard he had to work to barely maintain the Huoxi civilization from collapsing.

In addition, Xiang De also had to worry about Su Zhou's situation——if Su Zhou's soul did not return in the future, then the Huoxi people could basically be sentenced to chronic death.

Fortunately, Su Zhou's return gave him a shot in the arm.

To be precise, it was a shot in the arm for all the Huoxi people who had begun to feel confused and desperate.

Xiang De believed that with this news, many Huoxi people who were already worried about their real bodies would feel relieved and remain stable for a while.

Su Zhou withdrew his projection from the Netherworld Server.

"My personal space has evolved very completely now..."

Looking down at his small world, the youth nodded slightly, muttering thoughtfully, "In essence, the personal space should be a derivation of the 'World-Bearing Scale' supreme inheritance, or a basic form—after cultivating to the Perfect World, the realm of the Origin True Dragon, you can create a real and huge world, wandering in the void."

"And the complete form of this inheritance should be that the scales all over the giant dragon's body are small worlds. To break through the defense of the World-Bearing Scale, you must have the power to shatter a world——even if it is shattered, the power will be offset by the natural reaction of the world's destruction."

This was undoubtedly the effect of the World-Bearing Scale, and how to cultivate this method, Su Zhou felt that it should be to coordinate the spiritual energy cycle of the entire world, so that the world could grow normally.

However, after Su Zhou returned from the Perfect World, the growth rate of his personal space became faster and faster.

Until Su Zhou returned two years after going to the Aeon World, his personal space even had giant islands the size of five small continents, and it was no problem to nurture several special civilizations.

Why was this? Why did the development of the personal space accelerate?

After thinking about it, Su Zhou only thought of one possibility.

That was, after fighting the immortals, gods, and demons from the Perfect World, Su Zhou finally, from the bottom of his heart, had the 'determination and sense of responsibility to bear a world'.

And in the Aeon World, Su Zhou even shouldered the fate of the world, defeated the Sun Emperor, and persuaded the Twilight Dragon, allowing all living beings to go to the next new era.

Since then, the personal space seemed to have awakened, began to accelerate the absorption of spiritual energy in the void to self-evolve, and became more natural and agile.

"承世鳞 (Cheng Shi Lin, World-Bearing Scale)...Bearing the heart of the world, bearing the body of the world, bearing the fate you choose, bearing everything in the world, never regretting, never wavering, bearing everything, whether it is hardship or hope, joy or sorrow, moving forward."

Closing his eyes, Su Zhou sensed the essence of this inheritance, and he had a trace of understanding in his heart: "In addition to the World-Bearing Scale, Yala's other two inheritances, as well as the inheritances and blessings of other great existences, should also have corresponding special awakening conditions."

The Undying Blood is likely to require Su Zhou to really die once, and be resurrected under the condition of 'never regretting even in death', completely experiencing real death before he can achieve the 'true nature of immortality', in this ever-repeating multiverse where there is nothing new under the sun, with the will of immortality, eternally strive for an 'different result'.

And Sacred Geometry should achieve Yala's supreme inheritance 'Angle of Light and Time' at some stage, but because all the time-based abilities in the multiverse have been sealed, even Yala only adjusts the time difference between the alien world and the Earth universe for Su Zhou. So after seeing that Su Zhou didn't choose to continue to cultivate Sacred Geometry, Yala wasn't very angry, and even enjoyed it.

It's better than Su Zhou cultivating for a long time and discovering that it's an incomplete version, losing his and his own people, right?

Yala couldn't afford to lose this dragon!

As for the Reincarnation Seal of the Lonely Master, in essence, it is necessary to break the reincarnation. Su Zhou has done it once, so this power is completely used by Su Zhou and can be used to sense many mysterious predestined relationships that even the Divine Eyes cannot see.

Just like now, Su Zhou stared at his personal space, and he could see the intertwined true souls of 6.5 billion Huoxi people... and the new life being bred in this world.

Although they were just simple elemental lives, dependents such as Emu and Qiling, their existence, and will exist in the future, with endless reincarnation and karma.

"The correct inheritance needs to walk on the correct path to be considered complete."

Sighing, Su Zhou withdrew his gaze, withdrew from this space that could already be said to be a small world.

The humanoid youth lowered his head and looked at the Earth, his eyes calm: "This is not surprising... Just like a perspective that transcends time and space, I am walking on the correct path, so I can better understand the things that humans cannot understand."

"Although this will lead to ordinary humans gradually being unable to understand my existence, as long as ordinary humans are made to innovate and evolve together, civilization can leap and improve."

Of course, this is difficult.

People who walk too far ahead will never be understood by ordinary people.

But... many times, pioneers don't need to be understood.

Su Zhou also felt a trace of the correctness of the pioneer at this moment.

He was silent for a while.

"Then bless and watch."

Smiling, Su Zhou's humanoid form flew towards the Earth: "Lead without forcing, communicate without ordering——everyone has the seeds of innovation in their hearts, I just need to ignite them, germinate them, rather than force them to grow."

"This is, my correctness."

A cyan-purple meteor fell from the distant starry sky to the blue planet.

At his destination, many familiar relatives and friends were waiting, welcoming him, countless human eyes, welcoming the hero's return, cheering for him.

And the gray-black death star hung in the high sky of the universe, just like a pupil, gently overlooking this vibrant world, watching over all the living beings on it.

The year is 2021, September 22, morning.

Marshal of the Earth United Fleet, Minister of the New World Exploration Department of Zheng Nation, Su Zhou returned from the distant edge of the galaxy, bringing the good news of a great victory and the truth of the universe.

From this moment on, a brand new chapter is opened.